March 23, 2013

Please NBC Sports, Let Us GIve You Money!

How much would it add to your experience of watching F1 racing to have the same access to the multiple feeds available to fans in Europe?

For us quite a lot, we would much rather watch nat-sound onboard or hear communications between drivers and their engines on the pit wall rather than listening to three guys yammering on from a remote location. For this we would gladly pay a sizable extra, even if those extras were just streamed on the internet.

Check out for example this composite clip from today's qualifying, So much information, so many little interesting tidbits, can you pick some out?

Qualifying was interesting and again determined in part by tire choice, specifically in Q3, the timing of when to put on a fresh set of intermediates for a final push.

Interesting also how Vettel's Red Bull was pretty much a dog in the dry early sessions but blew everyone away in the final Q3, 9/10ths over P2 Massa.

Tomorrow, there's a 50% chance of rain around race time so we'll see who fortune favors and who's setup gamble pays off.

11 comments:

My F1 knowledge is only from American tv and I had no idea this stuff even existed. Having this feed would make qaulifing for me so much more interesting. Can I find this on the web somewhere? I am almost speechless as to how cool that information is. WOW!

WHOA! Man what we've been missing here in the states. That's like hearing NASA launch the space shuttle. Screw the common-tators. They should only speak at the intro and the outtro. Just spend the whole race seeing the cars, listening to the cars, and listening in on the radios. They're discussing set-ups, strategy, everything. I think with technology its only a matter of time before we can, for a fee, watch a proper British F1 telecast over the internet. I would have loved to have heard Murray Walker call a race back in the day.

I was going to say something about this after the Australia race but I got busy...

I gave the NBC coverage a chance and was SERIOUSLY disappointed. Not only did they just cut/paste the crew from SPEED, they literally decided to use the same format and as far as I can tell the same graphics, production, and talking points.

With all due respect to the three amigos...they're stale. None of them has set foot in an F1 pitlane in years (they didn't even travel to Austin last year unless I missed something) and Matchett blathers on like every single person watching is a newb with no knowledge of the deeper points and strategy of F1. Hobbs is about due for a nice room with south facing windows somewhere in Florida, and that leaves 'the other guy' who has, lets be honest, only a fraction of the actual F1 experience of the other two.

BUT, and this is what really gets me about the whole American F1 broadcast...they play an average of 3-4 commercials PER FREAKIN LAP. I started counting laps between commercial breaks during the race and gave up in frustration after realizing how much of the midfield action and strategy I was missing. They act like putting the live feed in a half-window with commercials in the other half of the screen is a blessing, but you can't really tell wtf is going when you can't even see the F1 feed graphics. It's not bad enough that they only bankroll one reporter and a cameraman to go to the actual race (as compared to BBC/SKY who send their entire team to every race...which may reflect the popularity of the sport in english-speaking europe, or add to it) but to pile on commercial after commercial is insulting. Then they act like ad-free last ten lap coverage is really cool - nope, all the action happened before that, the last laps are really just wrapping up the rest of the story.

So, I settled for sub-par coverage, delivered as if to a room full of F1 newcomers (I swear if I hear about how the DRS system works one more time from Matchett I'm gonna scream) and stuffed the remote in the couch so I wouldn't chuck it at the TV out of frustration when they cut to the 55th ad about when the first round of pitstops started happening. It really was distracting, to say the least - by the time they get back to the race my brain has lost interest and struggled to catch up on the action on track.

In summary, it's no wonder F1 has a problem getting fans here in the US - they're treated like it's a NASCAR race, with the associated ADD/short term attention thing going on. The network must be raking in the cash from all the commercials they air, and spend almost nothing on the actual broadcast itself (there were very few moments of real production, and the pre-race buildup was so bad...'ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?' could be heard around my house).

Look around a little bit and find yourself a decent feed of SKY or BBC, even if it isn't in HD you'll quickly realize the difference in quality of the overall show. And, if you're not down with that, find a torrent. They're usually up within an hour of the end of the race, in HD, and you can watch at your convenience, without a g-d commercial stuffed in every 4 minutes or so. You'll thank yourself for making that tiny extra effort.

I never missed a live event from before when Senna died to 2007. Then I found an F1 private torrent group that shares all of the British F1 race feeds. It was light night and day in the content of the commentary and interviews. I would have to take stupid pills to watch the American feed.

Amen, I would gladly pay for those features. As it stands, the coverage available in America sucks so hard that I sometimes question whether or not I should skip watching a race live and instead download the vastly superior BBC/Sky coverage.

I hate how NBC fills their broadcast with information suited to first time viewers. I mean seriously, how many F1 newbies are watching a qualifying session at 2 in the morning? I suppose they replay it the next day, but it still feels ridiculous when your "reward" for staying up until the crack of dawn is a bunch groan inducingly obvious information.

my feelings exactly, i was shocked by the difference or lack of expertise by the commentary team, it was more like old people gibber-gabbering with tv on. All they know is past champions and who won the same race last year, that's all they know, quality is appalling.

who the fuck breaks into commercials in middle of a quali session, at least i've not seen that before. am terribly disappointed.

Its unfortunately never going to change in the US. The execs have scripts that they follow for almost every show. They see what works for NASCAR so therefore everything else has to be the same way. Even the NASCAR coverage is utterly terrible anymore. Who needs 4 hours of pre-race jibberjabber? There is absolutely nothing to talk about for that long in a sport where nothing happens until the last 10 laps.

I'm thankful I can watch practice, qualifying, and the race. I don't watch them live because I have a real life and kids and work and cannot be bothered to be up at 3am each weekend to watch live. I also would hate watching live because of all the commercials. It's much nicer to DVR the show and fast forward through all the BS. In that regard I would never pay for any extra coverage if you had to watch the race live to get it. It would be throwing money away for me. I also don't do any of the torrents or online broadcasts because I just don't understand how they work and also don't have a new enough computer to handle anything. I really wish everything would go away from online content and start making the TV we pay 150$ a month for better.

Varsha is a blowhard and never shuts up. I don't mind Matchet or Hobbs because I truly believe they are told what they have to talk about by the producers and it's the same thing every time. Anyone can announce a race from an office 1000s of miles away. They need to get some unknown talent that's willing to travel to each and every race and do actual broadcasts.

@F1onNBCSports tweeted that they are going to be adding online coverage in April. I dont know if it will be the in car feeds like sky does or just mirror the cable channel, but the speed guys said before the switch that NBC ponied up for the whole FOM package, so they should have the in car and everything else available.